


Oaths Under Alias

by nimblermortal



Series: Marvel Wizards [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Brainwashing, Gen, Murder, wonder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 17:50:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18554767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimblermortal/pseuds/nimblermortal
Summary: Natasha's Ordeal. Or Romanova's, or the Widow's, or any other of her thousand name's.But certainly not Lisa Benjamin's.





	Oaths Under Alias

The Widow had a name for every person she had killed. One name, a dozen, a thousand - it was all the same to her, except that she was about to have another. Natasha Romanova, a recent college graduate, celebrating with a vacation to the US. Flying coach behind her target in first class, and she could claim any field of study she desired.

More relevant was her target: Lisa Benjamin, widow. Also a widow, also one who had made her fortune becoming such.

She and the Widow had a lot in common. She and young Romanova - nothing at all.

-*-

It was not treason to want to make the world a better place. It was not even treason to want to make the world a place where little girls did not have to be tortured. To save them from torture now, in this world, certainly; the Widow was not proposing that. But to desire a world without torture, without the necessity of torture, was safe. In the privacy of her own mind. If it did not show on her face.

No, the treason came later. Years later, since she avoided thinking of these things.

It was just that… if she was a tool in the hands of those who would make the world a better place, why were so many of the people she killed philanthropists? Philanthropists, charity founders, leaders championing education, safety, and shelter. She could believe in sacrificing a few innocents to influence those in power, but this seemed disproportionate. Not that she would ever ask why.

Why?

-*-

It was going to be a long flight. They often were. But in public, one could not simply drop into stakeout space and stare straight ahead for nine hours. One had to be inconspicuous. One had to have cover.

The Widow went to the airport bookshop for hers. Something to suit a college graduate, something instantly explicable and yet not worth asking about. She shopped for invisibility; the text did not matter, the title did. _The Plenipotent Peridexis_ , shaped like a textbook and large enough to half fill her backpack, would serve. It was large enough to serve as a booster seat for a child and potent enough to scare off even the actual college student who briefly caught her eye.

It was not enough to fend off a hardened flight attendant. Saying that the plane needed to be rebalanced, and would Romanova accept a complimentary upgrade to first class?

An ostentatious upgrade to first class was the last thing the Widow wanted; but it was the attention of being led up to first class or the attention of being seen to refuse it. Romanova played her part and giddily accepted.

Worse than the attention, the free seat turned out to be directly beside Lisa Benjamin’s. The Widow gripped Romanova’s book tighter. Lisa Benjamin fixed her with the medusoid stare of a thirty-five-year-old woman who made her fortune with her beauty looking at a twenty-two-year-old woman who still had it.

There was no defense but to hide herself behind the book and hope that basilisk gaze had not yet memorized her face. Romanova dropped the tray table, propped it up around her, and prepared herself for a long read.

But before she began, the Widow leaned forward and took a deep breath. The book smelled of exactly the right paper and glue, and just a hint of cinnamon.

-*-

The lords of the Widow’s world were, of course, ineffable and correct.

But how did they become so?

The Widow became what she was, what she had been, what she still was through years of carefully planned and executed training. Were her masters also trained? How did one train to be eternally correct?

One could be an expert in something, of course. The misguided terrorists she killed were often experts in things. But to be correct in everything, ineffably, ethically correct - how was it done? Did they volunteer to torture their sister-trainee because to do otherwise would be to be complicit in her treason, to put themselves under the knife? Or would that be ethically incorrect?

And if it were incorrect - why was it done?

-*-

Lisa Benjamin’s apartment was another nightmare: wealthy enough for a doorman, surrounded by crisp Christmas snow, and possessed of a spartan modern aesthetic. No improvised weapons here. The Widow trudged round the corner for a florist and a bicycle, then charmed the doorman into letting her deliver the flowers to Lisa Benjamin’s door.

“Well,” he said, “it is Christmas. I suppose even a bat like Ms. Benjamin deserves something.”

The Manhattan flat smelled of tea tree and lemon. Judging by the decor and lack of dust, the only people who went there were Lisa Benjamin and a very thorough maid service. The kitchen was lavishly furnished, but the fridge was unplugged. The Widow had meant to use her own tools for the kill, as she had for the door, but for convenience’s sake she slid a long knife out of the knife block in one thin-gloved hand.

There was a single hard-cushioned chair looking out through the row of chic windows. The Widow sat in it to wait. In the darkness, every dancing snowflake was crystalline clear.

At the side of the chair was one small, tiny glass table with a single unornamented coaster on it. The kettle in the kitchen, the Widow thought, had seen use. This was not a welcoming or a comfortable existence, but it suited someone very well. Someone who liked her privacy. The Widow did not look for her mug collection.

The door opened.

The light came on.

The Widow’s eyes, like a cat’s, adjusted and she stood up.

Lisa Benjamin recognized her, that much was clear. “Bitch,” she snarled, and flung herself bare-handed at the Widow. The Widow held that long knife out and slid it in with culinary precision as she ducked under her target’s arms, fastidiously avoiding letting Benjamin get her DNA under her fingernails.

She caught Benjamin’s fall and lowered her to the ground - no thud, more implication of some intimacy in the murder. But she did not let Benjamin claw her face. Then she waited, and watched.

When Lisa Benjamin had finished dying, the Widow stepped over her and almost left. Best to go quickly before a further trace was left. But then she turned back, and brushed the hair off Benjamin’s face. Pulled so that it radiated gently away from her head. Arranged that unthinking grimace into something a little blanker, a little softer.

Then she left, locked the door behind her, and disappeared into the anonymity of New York City streets.

-*-

The experts she killed trained to become such, and yet they were incorrect. It was insufficient training, insufficiently focused. But someone who had dedicated forty years to the conditions under which rats could be studied - what further dedication could there be? How much more time could be devoted?

All of it.

The Winter Soldier confirmed this for the Widow. She was flawed; he was not. She, when not in use, waited to be used. He, when not in use, ceased to exist. Only this created perfection.

Only one thing could be studied perfectly, then: the self. Only one thing could be ineffably known.

Who could claim to know more than themself?

This, then, was treason.

-*-

There was _so much life_ in the book. It seemed astonishing that something so small - voluminous though it was - could contain such. But it was there. She found herself turning the pages silently at night, reading by moonlight so she wouldn’t be caught.

There was life on Alpha Centauri. On neutron stars. Life under the seas of moons of planets she had vaguely heard of, that she almost knew existed. Cloud-life on Jupiter. Hard, cold life hibernating on asteroids. And then, like a sudden bright flare, the life of Earth - strange, delicate carbon-based life that she wrapped her tongue carefully around the syllables of. Vast, heavy life feeding solely on particles of sunlight so exquisitely fine that they had no mass at all. Deep sea life that never saw such light and fed on sulfurous vents.

Surface life, close and histrionic and fragile, playing out its pageants. She knew how quickly they ended, those stories, but not how often, how nearly they had all ended - and yet they continued, joyously, obliviously, investing in every tiny useless shred of effort, forming heroic struggles against each other over the most insignificant things, ants and dogs and chimps and birds and lizards, all of it useless, purposeless, gloriously alive, and beyond it all -

_I am the molten heart of the world._

All of it so fragile, and so constantly willing to offer everything, so constantly doing so.

She watched it like theater and the story sank into her bones, as stories had sunk into the bones of life unending. Powerful because it was the story she had spent a decade trying to outline in herself; but it asked more of her for that, not less. Asked, even if it did not ask of. _She_ asked. What have _I_ risked?

-*-

One thing could be known. One being could know each being truly. One being could know what was right for it.

Who was the Widow to judge what lived well in its own way? Who was she to end that life?

-*-

They sent her after an annoyance, a thorn in their side, a petty assassin. Nothing like as good as she was. And once, she wouldn’t have thought any more of it than that, but - but now - they were so gloriously _different_. He. She. That alone was the laughter of life. But he, killer from a distance, clumsy and awkward in speech and action. She, graceful and charming in both. The differences! He, sad and alone and -

\- and -

\- and she.

He, one arrow trained directly at her across the room. She, too far away, too slow. He, looking straight at her, his breaths measured and focused. She, looking straight at him, panting with her run and - and -

And he turned his bow away. He turned aside.

What had she ever risked?

\-  a child, a girl disemboweling a girl she had grown up with -

She ran. She rushed him. And he was up, the arrow flying, the arrow lodged in her hands, in the only thing in her hands, a book, her words, her words saying, sobbing, her tears, “I am _so tired_ of death.”

Him, a hand at the back of his head: “Aw, Clint, no.”

Him, a hand reaching out to hers.


End file.
